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Tree tags in Arboretum soon to appear on trees downtown

During the week of May 21, the informational tags attached to the trees that line the Arboretum will also appear downtown. Led by the Arboretum museum education interns, the project is a collaboration between the UC Davis Arboretum and the City of Davis Tree Commission.

The tree tags are attached with a string to the trunk of each tree at eye level. Each tree tag features informational messages about the tree. Some of the tags feature specific facts about the tree, such as the number of Picnic Days and Whole Earth Festivals the tree has lived through. Other tags feature general facts about trees.

For Maya Groff, an Arboretum museum education intern, one of the more impactful tags is one that assigns value to the trees.

“The most important [type of tag] for us and the Tree Commission was the ‘This tree gives back’ [tag],” Groff said. “It’s like an appraisal process for a tree. You can appraise a tree just like you do a house, so can see just how much [carbon dioxide] it reduces and the energy saved per tree.”

The inspiration for the tree tag project was from a similar project done at the Morton Arboretum in Lisle, Ill. According to Maya Makker, the Arboretum education interpretive manager, one of the members of the City’s Tree Commission was at the Morton Arboretum when they observed the tags that were attached to some of the trees.

“[The tags] are kinda getting people to think about how trees can benefit our community and what they offer to people,” Makker said. “I think what we wanted to do is to draw attention to trees that people walk by every day, and [the trees] are just such a part of our landscape that you don’t even notice them and you don’t even think about what they’re doing for our community.”

The project for the campus tree tags began at the end of Winter Quarter, and the tags were hung up on campus trees the week before Picnic Day. When choosing trees, Makker explained that they looked for trees that have had important historical value or environmental impact